by David Khara
“Who are the two of you?” he asked Eytan.
“Let’s just say, we’re allies. The less you know, the better we’ll all be.”
“Sir, I’ve spent over half my life in a country under communist rule, and I’ve put up with all the inconveniences that that implies. It takes more than fake firefighters and two secret agents on a mission to intimidate me.”
The rebuke seemed to snap Elena out of her drowsy thoughts. She showed fresh interest in the conversation.
To Eytan’s surprise, Vladek motioned at the duffle.
“An expert eye quickly detects the shape of gun barrels in a bag.”
“Fake firefighters?” Eytan said, smiling. That was all he intended to respond to.
“I’ve been following the news on TV since this morning. I would have been completely suckered by the whole fire story if those men hadn’t paid us a visit last night and again this afternoon. For over ten years, I was production director at a company that stocked highly flammable and explosive products. So believe me, I can recognize a firefighter when I see one. And anyway, their questions weren’t directly related to the fire.”
“What exactly did they want to know?” asked Eytan.”
“If we visited the village frequently, if we were there the day before, if we noticed anything different. They gave the appearance of taking no more than a casual interest in our answers, but they might as well have been wearing secret-police badges.”
Eytan saw the man in a new light. The former Eastern Bloc countries were chock-full of these rogue characters—masters in the art of dodging roadblocks and quick to catch any booby traps. Vladek definitely belonged to this group of gritty individuals.
“Did they question you about your time at Paramo?” Eytan asked point blank.
Branislav’s father was caught off guard. But he didn’t flinch from the question.
“They did not. I see where you’re going. No need to beat around the bush.”
Eytan seized the opportunity.
“Mr. Poborsky, did you ever work on Semtex?”
“Semtex? What’s that?” Branislav asked, sitting up in his chair.
That was Elena’s cue to show her host that her vocabulary consisted of more than a few monosyllabic words. Plus, she didn’t see any threat in the Poborsky household—mother, senior, or junior.
“Semtex is one of the most powerful explosives ever created. It was invented by a Czech man named Stanislav Brebera. This explosive gets its name from Semtin, the city where it was created. If I’m not mistaken, that’s just a few miles from Pardubice. And here’s a juicy tidbit: Semtex was once the preferred plaything for many terrorists.”
“Dad, is that true?”
Vladek shrugged.
“You would know if you had been more interested in my line of work and less obsessed with soccer. Obviously, we produced it, but for industrial purposes, mostly for demolition companies. We also manufactured it for military use, but I didn’t work on that until the very end of my career. We had absolutely no intention of letting it get into the hands of terrorists.”
“What exactly did your work consist of?” asked Eytan.
“I was responsible for the addition of a chemical tagging agent. In its raw form, Semtex is basically undetectable. After the product was used in terrorist attacks, we were pressured by the international community to add certain substances that would make the explosive detectable. The substances we added produced a signature vapor emission.”
“And according to Branislav, one of your former colleagues, Ivan, lived close by. He might have been one of the victims. Could you tell us what his contributions were?”
Vladek was silent for a few moments.
“Ivan was part of my team. That’s all. Can you tell me why you’re asking these questions? What really happened in that village yesterday?”
Eytan turned to Branislav and gave him a nod.
“Dad, on my way here, I saw something that they’re not talking about in the news.”
Branislav started telling his story, and despite his father’s rapid-fire interruptions, objections, and questions, he made it to the end of his account.
“We’re hoping your connection with Paramo will give us a lead,” Elena intervened before Eytan had the chance to open his mouth. He didn’t protest. In fact, he was rather pleased to see her participate.
“What agency do you work for?”
“For the moment, all you need to know is that we’re trying to stop any more disasters from happening,” Eytan replied, beating Elena to the punch.
“Dad, he saved my life. I think you can trust him.”
“Let me be the judge of that. Answer the question.”
“We work for an antiterrorist branch of Mossad. We have good reason to believe that what happened yesterday is just the opening act for a whole wave of bigger and deadlier attacks. Vladek, any information could be vital.”
“Branislav?”
“Yes?”
“Go see your mother.”
“What? But—”
“Just do what I said!”
Branislav glared at his father, but did as he was told.
“Promise me my wife and son have nothing to be scared of.”
“As we don’t know anything further at the moment, I can’t promise that,” Eytan said. “But they have no reason to be frightened of us. We’ll do everything to ensure your safety.”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree by going after Semtex,” Vladek muttered as he rubbed his chin.
“What do—” Eytan didn’t have the chance to finish his question.
“But Branislav was definitely on the right track by scanning through the list of village residents.”
Elena spoke up. “Be more precise.”
Vladek rose from his armchair and walked over to a desk. He opened a drawer and started rummaging anxiously. Eytan slid a discreet hand toward the weapon hidden in his jacket. After several seconds, a visibly relieved Vladek extracted his hand and waved a chocolate bar in the air.
“My wife is going to yell at me. She gets all hysterical whenever my cholesterol rises.”
He ripped open the wrapper, broke off a hunk of the chocolate, and offered it to Elena. She declined, but Eytan couldn’t resist.
“Bad memories die hard,” Vladek continued as he sat down again. “And the Czechs trained their fair share of demons. From 1950 to 1990, our country played a crucial role in developing psychoactive substances for the Soviet Union. Our chemists were considered the best in the Eastern Bloc. And as it turns out, a lot of people who worked in those labs were residents of that village. I can’t tell you what their specific fields of expertise were. I gleaned this information from casual conversations. It’s highly likely that the village had fewer innocent victims than we’ve been led to believe.”
“It didn’t look like a planned military operation but, instead, an emergency response,” Eytan interjected. “The fire and the media coverage attest to that. The government authorities have two objectives: first, to steer attention away from the real problem, and second, to understand and fix said problem. In that regard, things appear to be taken care of.”
“A backfire is a highly effective way to control a wildfire,” Elena said, a contemptuous smile on her face.
“It’s the oldest trick in the book,” Vladek said. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you more information. You know as much as I do now.”
Eytan leaned over his bag and took out the folder with Branislav’s papers. He pulled out the enlarged photograph, stood up, and handed it to Vladek. Then he sat down next to him. With catlike stealth, Elena glided over to join them.
“Examine this image carefully. Do you notice anything?”
Vladek absorbed the blow. The sidewalks were littered with bodies. These were people he had known for years. He had enjoyed fishing trips with some of them. Feeling the weight of the agents’ eyes, he collected himself and examined the photo in detail.
Eytan pointed to a spot
in the picture. “There, on the wall, behind the man in the protective suit.”
“It looks like a series of drawings or maybe some uppercase letters. That’s strange.”
“Have you ever seen this inscription?”
“No. Never,” Vladek said, sure of himself.
“Given the profile of these residents, I wouldn’t have pegged them for graffiti artists. Now, in that corner, what do you see?”
“Another guy in a white suit, but it looks like he’s photographing the wall.”
Eytan took the picture out of Vladek’s hands.
“We have a couple of leads, at least,” Elena said. “They’re not the ones we were expecting, but either way, this is helpful.”
“There’s only one way to know for sure,” Eytan said.
“By capturing one of these military men who were at the scene,” Elena chimed in. “And making him talk.”
Eytan couldn’t miss the change in the woman. Just a few minutes earlier, she had been ready to nod off. Now she was fully invested in the case.
“You won’t have to go far,” Vladek said as he got up. “Headquarters are only a mile northeast of here. And since I suspect the firefighters are part of the army’s special forces, you should be able to find what you’re looking for. You can walk to the camp by cutting through the forest.”
After logging thousands of miles on land and in the air, Eytan was looking forward to seeing a little action.
Elena’s face looked positively gleeful. She rubbed her hands together in excitement. Yes, Eytan thought, they were both up for a little action.
CHAPTER 15
The room was as silent as a grave. Eytan stared at a Flemish-inspired painting, one of four in the same style hanging in the living area. This canvas depicted a blithe group of bourgeois men gathered around a farm table that was filled with baskets of fruit and glasses of wine.
How depressing. You’d have to put a gun to my head to make me have these in my home, he thought. He preferred Claude Monet.
He wanted to scratch the work just to see if a more valuable painting lay underneath this rendering. It was highly improbable, but taking just a bit of the paint off was still tempting.
“Are you interested in art?” Vladek asked.
“No,” Eytan lied to avoid a long and pointless conversation. “I was just wondering if—”
“What?” Elena and Vladek asked in unison.
“Czechoslovakia played a very specific role as an Eastern Bloc country, and, uh, I’m not sure of the exact connection yet, but—”
“But what?” Elena pressed. The woman simply had no patience.
“Forget it. I was thinking out loud. We should get a move on. But Vladek, I need to ask your son to join us.”
“Excuse me?”
“We don’t have a choice,” Elena intervened. “If we discover something important while we’re scoping out the camp, we’ll need to act quickly. I don’t speak Czech, and I’m assuming the same goes for my partner.”
Eytan nodded as confirmation.
“How do you expect us to get any facts if we don’t understand the language?” she said.
Elena’s insistence elicited the expected response.
“Absolutely not,” Vladek barked.
While he had appeared calm and poised up to this point, the man was now red in the face. Eytan could tell he had raised a lot of hell in the factory.
“Without an interpreter, we’re stuck,” Elena said and sighed.
“Take me. I speak Czech.” Vladek had a defiant look on his face and his fists on his hips. Eytan felt Elena looking at him. He would have to settle this.
“Mr. Poborsky, that’s not a good idea,” Eytan said. “Going with any civilian will slow us down. But we don’t have a ton of options. We need someone who knows the area and can move quickly if something goes wrong. If we have to get out of there, Branislav will move faster than you. Besides, he has already put a considerable amount of work into this, and I’m sure he would object to being left behind.”
“There’s still plenty of gas in the tank at my age,” Vladek protested.
“I believe you. But this isn’t a pissing contest. It’s going to be a dangerous mission with many variables.”
“How can I trust that you can achieve your goal and protect my son?”
Eytan remained silent for a moment and then locked his blue eyes with Vladek’s. Eytan could almost feel the shiver shooting up the man’s spine at the sight of his cold determination. If Vladek hadn’t understood before, he did now. Above all else, Eytan was a soldier.
“Mr. Poborsky, there’s no one more prepared to protect your son or better suited to lead this kind of operation,” Elena said with a soft voice.
This woman never failed to surprise Eytan, who hadn’t thought she was capable of coming off as kind or understanding. Her tactful intervention managed to appease Vladek.
“All right,” he said. “He’s a big boy. If he wants to go with you, I won’t keep him. My wife is going to kill me.” He gave the two agents an anxious look and left the room to get his son.
Eytan leaned toward Elena. “What’s your game?” he asked in a hushed voice.
She squirmed in her chair and tapped the armrest with her long, thin fingers.
“Did you want to spend all day arguing with gramps? I said what he wanted to hear. That’s all. I’m just as anxious to be done with this as you are, 302. I plan on doing everything it takes, as surprising as that may seem. Plus, what I told him wasn’t all lies.”
She shot him a smile that he couldn’t quite decipher.
“Meaning?”
“No one can compete with us.”
“That’s true, I suppose,” Eytan said as he sank back into the sofa. Her sense of superiority annoyed him. For years, he had prepared his missions without relying on his superhuman strengths, but instead on rigorous practice, focus, and determination. Elena figured she intrinsically had the upper hand, end of story. And while he welcomed this flawed attitude in his enemies, he did not tolerate it in his partners—as rare as they might be.
Vladek returned with Branislav, who agreed to accompany them without further discussion.
Eytan and Elena exchanged a look and rose in unison from their seats.
“If all goes well, we’ll be back here in about two hours. Until then, don’t leave your house,” the Kidon operative ordered Vladek. He turned to Branislav. “Keep your cell phone and documents here. Oh, one more request.”
Two minutes later, the crew was regrouped on the terrace. A strong breeze was rippling the lake and making the treetops sway. Vladek mapped out the lay of the land for Eytan. His arms at his sides, Branislav stared at Elena like a puppy dog.
“I look like an idiot,” he grumbled. “Plus, this dumb thing itches!”
“No, it’s fine. Seriously, you look way better in this getup,” Elena teased.
“I doubt it,” he muttered.
She pulled down the midnight-blue ski mask that Eytan was making their impromptu translator wear.
“There, that’s better. Now we can see only your eyes. If you have to look like a bozo, better to wear the thing properly.”
“So I really do look like an idiot.”
“Branislav,” she said and sighed as she put her hands on the reporter’s shoulders, “how could you not?”
She left him with his wounded vanity and, with a light step from this little ribbing session, rejoined Eytan and Vladek. Branislav followed.
With his bulky military bag on his shoulder, Eytan signaled that it was time to go.
They disappeared into the woods.
As Vladek watched them leave, he reassessed the evening’s revelations—those made by Eytan and his son, as well as his own.
He went back into the living room, where his wife was waiting, and silently sat down on the couch.
“They’re going to bring him back safe and sound.”
She shot him a look. “How do you know that for sure?’
“Intuition,” he muttered.
He grabbed the remote and flipped to the news channel, which continued to display the firefighting planes circling the forest. The same shot had been playing on a loop for hours, even though the water bombers had returned to their base ages ago. Again and again, the news anchor praised the teamwork of the firefighters and the army. They had contained the catastrophe.
Nothing but fabrications, he thought as the national motto ran through his head. Pravda zvítězí: truth prevails.
CHAPTER 16
The moon rose in the Bohemian sky, casting a hazy glow on the forest. Usually nighttime travelers welcomed such illumination, but for a stealth mission, it was clearly less favorable. For the last twenty minutes, the team had been trekking in contemplative silence. The undergrowth and damp soil muffled the sound of their footsteps. Bringing Branislav had proved to be a smart decision. In fact, the reporter had become pack leader and was shepherding his friends at a decent pace up the steep footpaths.
As the caboose, Eytan watched the young man forge ahead with his little flashlight. Both agents had objected to his using it. They wanted to remain as discreet as possible. But he had insisted. “I already look like an ass in this mask. I’m not going to sprain an ankle for your amusement too.”
It was a convincing argument, considering the terrain. They even let him ditch the balaclava—temporarily.
The Kidon was keeping an eye on Elena. Her behavior was erratic, mysterious, and unpredictable. At times she was withdrawn, and at other times she was fully engaged. She was impatient and downright dangerous. He hadn’t forgotten her promise to take him out once their mission was over. She was also capable of deluding people into thinking she had compassion. Eytan was annoyed to see Branislav gallantly holding aside the shrub and tree branches for her. Then she would sadistically let them snap back and hit him in the face.
Half an hour after the start of their hike, they were out of the forest and had reached the summit of a green hill. The location offered a sweeping view of the valley, which was intersected by a small stream.
Eytan stopped and carefully placed his bag at his feet. He unzipped it and took out a gun.
